I don't know if this is cool to post but it's on Youtube so I take it Vinnie doesn't mind:



Pretty cool explanation of his approach, I think. Thoughts and opinions?

I have the original VHS but I'm not a guitar player...

Yeah, I bought that when it came out too thought I wasn't playing guitar at the time, I started about 4 years later. I didn't realise when I first got it that he was miming all the examples from the album at the start.

He plays the rest, it's a total shred fest. Ah, the good old days.

ive got the VHS, and i ripped it to DVD. I love it, its very informative. BUt sometimes ill be watching it and totally just get lost in his shredding and not pay attention to what hes saying hahaha

I look back at it (I got it in 89 on VHS) and I think it's not that good! I think there was a whole rush to get as many of these vids out as quickly as possible at the time and many of them were probably not that well planned out. I'm sure there are worse though. Some of the details are pretty sketchy, "remember a sweep is just gracefully sliding your pick across the strings"? And the 2 jamming parts with that awful drum machine and droning E rhythm...argh! Still, there are parts that are just jaw droppingly good! I remember showing a bunch of friends the first lick in the second half when Vinnie does the little sideways look at the finish of it and they were all looking at the TV going WTF!!!

You could poke holes in his terminology but it still represents how HE looks at it. So if you want to learn the VV method, there he is. Personally he was never much of an influence on my playing-wise. I didn't really want to cop what he did so much as that I just enjoyed it as something a little different. The randomness of a lot of his leads sounded cool - not like something I wanted to DO, but it was cool to hear. For chromaticism I like Petrucci's approach a little more.

I searched for years for that VHS and at a time when I was about to give up playing as I couldnt figure out how to play like VV I found a new copy and I found a way out of the rut I had been in for so long .. I foolishly said to myself that I would be as good as VV by the time I was 30 .. LOL .. 40 is looming and still i am not there yet .. having to relearn everything I knew about guitar was a monster pain in the ass but .. he changed my playing forever .. and for that I am gratefull

I can't play like Vinnie at all but I enjoy what he does a lot. Some of his leads seem like wild abandon but they're not, I can play along with them in my head and they seem to fit the songs.

Then there's the totally excellent slower stuff on the ballads. Vinnie can shred and play slowly just as good. The slow stuff is often harder for lots of people.

I've got that on VHS too.
My fav was the Spanish Balero lick.
Sweeet

Yeah, the miming at the begininning is quite obvious but it's also obvious he can play them, so why wouldn't you?

I own this as well. The gate that he is using annoys the hell out of me. Let that F#CKER feed back !!!

poserboy71 wrote:I own this as well. The gate that he is using annoys the hell out of me. Let that F#CKER feed back !!!

Man, it was the 80's, that's the processors of the day. I loved my Digitech Twin Tube when I got it, save for the lack of effects, but the sound!!